Sunday, October 02, 2005

Nats MVP & Cy Young

With the end of the season, I'm interested to see what you guys think (even you non-commenters!)

If you were awarding a Cy Young and an MVP just for the Nats, who would you vote for?

I've got a few ideas kicking around in my head, but I'll save them for later.

In the meantime, please leave a comment listing your top 3 MVP votes (in order, please!) and your Cy Young pick. I'll come up with some sort of scoring method and see what you guys decide. If you have a special case for a particular player, comment away!

I'd like to get some more hitters in there, but I've got too much reason to not vote for the guys: Guillen's inability with RISP, Johnson and Church being injured when we needed them most, Wilkerson's inconsistency. Vinny obviously doesn't get much credit for his three months in the wilderness, Vidro missed half the season and we don't even need to discuss Guzman.

I feel the need to qualify these. Cordero gets MVP because he saved so many games. If you recall we didn't have a known closer at the beginning of the year and that was just one reason why people thought the Nats would get destroyed. 23 year old Cordero came out of nowhere and led the MLB in saves. Awesome. Is anyone else concerned about his ability to play 162 games though? He went from savior to liability at the end of the year.

Patterson gets Cy Young because he's hands down the team's best pitcher. His record doesn't reflect his dominance this year, due to crappy run support. The 3.5 man rotation in September also hurt him.

Carro1l gets my MVP vote because he did the most with the least - including the least support from his manager. Robinson validated this vote by keeping Carroll on the bench and that petulant LVP Guzman on the field - Carroll was too valuable to put out there.

Wilkerson and Wilson get mentioned as most valuable strike-out artists.

Cy Young1. Cordero2. Ayala3. Carrasco

Cordero edges Ayala even though both of them were the most consisten pitchers on the team.

It's tempting to give it to Cordero. But despite his gaudy numbers, I've rarely felt like he's a lights-out guy like Billy Wagner. More like Jose Mesa--usually gets the job done, but flirts with disaster too much. Patterson is looking like a true #1 starter, this year's W-L record notwithstanding.

MVP:1. Johnson2. Guillen3. Schneider

Yeah, he got hurt and faded down the stretch. But back in June when we were winning all those games, Nick was usually the one driving in the go-ahead run.

On a team that won with pitching and defense (and sometimes pitching in spite of defense) no hitter deserves the MVP. Livan pitched 200+ innings on one leg and usually gave our overworked bullpen the night off.